I remember the first time I met Hunter Lovins. We were on a joint trip to China, invited by a group sponsored by the mayor of Shanghai. Our mission was to help brainstorm the future sustainability of a city that wanted to double in size in about ten years, adding the equivalent density of San Francisco.

On the morning of the first day we boarded a bus to tour the old city, where they’d started to tear down many of the historic structures for their growth on steroids. I looked over at a woman standing next to Amory Lovins, who I’d met before at a few early U.S. Green Building Council meetings at the renowned Rocky Mountain Institute, one of the foremost environmental NGO think tanks in the world, which Hunter cofounded.

She had on a large black cowboy hat, pointed red and black cowboy boots and a large thick oval metal belt buckle securing her thick brown leather belt around her dark blue jeans. Long braided brownish blonde hair hung down over a checkered pink and white flannel shirt. She looked fit and strong. Later I learned that Hunter was an active rodeo barrel racing champion.

During our intensive US/China brainstorms on how to mitigate the environmental impact of the massive development plans for Shanghai and decades later of good work and interactions, I’ve come to admire Hunter’s prolific mind and passion for nurturing business and capitalism to solve our ecological problems in a win-win.

In this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show, Hunter says, “It has become really apparent that there is a business case for sustainability. Activists used to think that it was simply a moral imperative that we would lose life as we know it on the planet, and that remains true, but what has changed… is that companies have realized that when you behave more responsibly to people and the planet, you make more money. Surprise!”

Hunter has an incredible background. She’s president of Natural Capitalism Solutions and has been a professor of sustainable business at several MBA programs. She’s an author of more than 14 books, global keynote speaker, and Hero of the Planet award winner by Time Magazine. Hunter was Rocky Mountain Institute’s CEO for strategy and has a law degree.

It’s my pleasure to invite you to listen in to our conversation as Hunter Lovins and I discuss the future of business and our planet in this week’s Regen360 iTunes podcast show.

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Praise For David Gottfried

"Our future depends on sustainability...David Gottfried's pioneering work is proof that we can do it..."

— President Bill Clinton

"I recently heard you speak at Design Green Cincinnati. Your story has given me confidence and patience to stay persistent, knowing that making a difference takes time."

— Shawn Hesse, Leed AP Architecture, Bayer Becker

"Martha Graham, the great dancer and choreographer, once described the creative process as "blessed unrest." The same could be said for David Gottfried. Anyone who knows David can feel the energy. It is a toe-tapping, eye-flashing kinetic that takes on any challenge. What he took on was the building industry and its relationship to living systems. He founded and helped build the most important green trade organization in the world. There is virtually no second place. No organization has had a bigger impact on the environment than this one..."

— Paul Hawken, Author, Ecology of Commerce

"David Gottfried gave one of the most moving and inspirational talks to the Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design in San Francisco and he was a featured speaker with Dan Pink not so very long ago in Toronto. I think you will enjoy him: good sense of humor, relaxed, articulate, passionate, youthful. He has a fresh message."

— James P. Cramer, Chairman & Principal, The Greenway Group

"I enjoyed your presentation. Your honesty about the setbacks and your determination to proceed were both very inspiring."

— Kurt Lavenson, Owner & Principal, Lavenson Design

"Thank you so much for doing the closing keynote for this year's Chapter Forum [at Greenbuild Philadelphia]. You physically and mentally brought the energy level up, and inspired our community like only you can do."

— Margo Street, LEED Green Associate Manager, Community Advancement, U.S. Green Building Council

David is a person who's simply wired differently than most others. His sense of right and wrong is like forged steel. His understanding of a holistic approach to problem solving, creating and human wellness is something special. And his compassion for his fellow humans and those generations yet conceived is a life force about which I stand transfixed in some childlike combination of reverence and awe.

— Rick Fedrizzi

What I love about what you've done is to return people back to a way of thinking that is in sympathy with the world instead of standing on top of the world.

— David Adjaye

I just wanted to drop you a note to say how much I am enjoying your podcasts--really informative and really inspiring!